I’m back!

Sorry for the long hiatus. A lot happened and I had some things I had to work through and deal with, so the blog was something I felt like I could drop for a little while when I didn’t really have much energy to spare. But things are better now, so I’m back!

I know I promised you an LTUE post, so here it goes, two odd months later.

First off, it was great to see something I had helped plan go so well. Second, it was even more fun because my little sister came with me, so I didn’t have to do it alone this year. Third, I learned a lot, some of which I’m still processing and figuring out how it applies to my writing and myself.

Here’s some quotes from various panels and presentations!

“Give yourself permission to fail spectacularly.” ~Danyelle Leafty

“We are our own greatest adversity.” ~Loralee Leavitt, on a panel about overcoming adversity

“It’s important to base your parameters of success on things you can control.” ~Danyelle Leafty

“If it doesn’t have a very good reason to be in [your novel], then don’t put it in!” ~Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury

“Deciding you’re a writer is a mental decision.” ~ Julie Wright

“History and folklore are integral to any culture…and there should be references to it.” ~L.E. Modesitt

“When it comes to writing, most rules are suggestions.” ~David Farland/Dave Wolverton

“There are two ways to do research- at the time, in depth, or continually. I do continually.” ~L.E. Modesitt

“I realized I needed to become like a sponge and absorb information about [everything]… I’ve been called a landfill of useless information.” ~David Farland/Dave Wolverton

“Don’t give [the reader] information when they need to know it, but slightly before.” ~L.E. Modesitt

Then there was an amazing keynote speech by Megan Whalen Turner on the importance of not censoring books. Here’s some quotes from that:

“I think you shouldn’t restrict access to books because you shouldn’t restrict access to books.”

“If a teenager can’t [choose a “good” book] the problem is not with the books.”

“Saying at 16 they aren’t old enough to choose their own books but at 18 are old enough to choose to go to war is ridiculous.”

“The freedom not to read a book is as important as the freedom to read a book.”

“The children who take those books to their parents [books they aren’t comfortable with] are asserting the right to control what goes into his/her own head.”

“Your kids are going to make mistakes, but so did we. That doesn’t mean we should restrict access to books.”

Since my mom is a librarian and I’m both a writer and an avid reader, I was in complete agreement with Megan Whalen Tuner’s arguments against censoring books. It was a great speech. (This may be a topic I choose to dive into more at a later date.)

There is one other presentation that I want to write about, but that presentation, given by the amazing Sandra Tayler, has had so big an impact on my life that it deserves it’s own post. Expect that for next week.

So there you are! Two months late, but there’s my LTUE catch up.

24,355 words! And… in other news, I’m behind.

Yeah, if you do the math, I’m behind on my NaNo book. But you know what? It only bothers me a little bit. Sure, I’m going to try to catch up, but if I don’t, I’ll just finish it as soon as possible after November is over. I’ve still written more in a 17 day period then I think I have before in my life, I’m writing every day, and I’m enjoying myself immensely. Isn’t that the real goal anyway?

It’s interesting as I’ve been writing this novel. I started out thinking that it was going to be three sections taking place over different chunks of time. The more I keep writing, however, the more I suspect that I might actually have two books here. Well, that’s what the rewrite stage is for. For now, I’m going to just keep plugging along and giving it my best shot.

I’m also discovering that I’m not very good at coming up with clues for a mystery. I’m pretty sure the mystery part of my novel is absolute trash. But again, that’s what the rewrite stage is for. For now, I’m just putting the word BLANK anywhere that there’s supposed to be some sort of clue so I’ll know that I need to go back there and fix it. Then I just move forward! I’m trying not to let myself get hung up on things, because I know that will stop me from writing. So far, it’s working pretty well.

In other news, we had our first snow storm of the year last weekend. It resulted in some very pretty pictures that I was lucky enough to take. Maybe soon I’ll post some of them.

For now, I need to get back to my NaNo novel!

11,684 words and counting!

I am having a blast with my NaNo book! Seriously, things are going SO much better than they were last year. I’m a little behind where I want to be, but only by about four hundred words. (I choose not to write on Sundays, so I have to hit about 2,000 words a day to finish.) I just checked where I got to on my novel last year and the highest I hit was 16,238 words before I gave up and focused on finishing my playwriting class.

I had forgotten how much of a difference it makes to write an idea that’s already pretty well laid out in your mind before you start. I think that was the largest problem with my NaNo for last year (Lorrie’s story) that I only finished a couple of weeks ago. I hadn’t let it simmer enough before I started writing it, so things were changing all over the place. This idea is going really well, though I’m doing something that I’ve never done before. I’m writing it backwards.

You see, I started at the beginning, but the scene that kept popping up in my head and demanding to be written is what I suspect will be the climax. So I finally gave in and wrote that. Now I’ve been writing the scenes around that and slowly working my way back towards the beginning, one chapter at a time. And it’s going much better than starting at the beginning was. Go figure.

In doing all this, I’m also discovering/learning how to budget my time extremely well. I’ve finally found a calendar/to do list system that works really well for me and I’ve never felt more productive. Not that I haven’t fallen off every now and again, but I’ve been hopping right back on the next day. Usually I just give up on the system and try something else. Basically, I have a desk calendar that holds all of my appointments. Then I have a small notebook that I carry around with me that has a two page spread for each day. On the left I write in any appointments for that day and my to do list. The right page is for notes so that everything is in one place. I love it! It’s working incredibly well for me.

Anyway, that’s about it for tonight. Life is just fantastic!

NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow!

I’m pretty excited about it. And, just like I did last year, I’ve already changed my mind about what I want to do. However, unlike last year, I’ve decided to change it BEFORE NaNoWriMo started, so I’m already ahead of the game compared to my last attempt. Basically, I decided to write a project that I will probably never publish, may never let anyone else ever see, but is something I’ve wanted to write for a while now but was a bit leery about committing the time to. But today, while driving to work, I decided, what the heck! I might as well just go for it, get this book out of my system, and have a blast. Plus, I’m a bit more passionate about this project that I am about the idea I was going to use, so it’s more likely I’ll actually finish this one. (Not that I don’t think I would have finished the other idea. It’s still an idea I want to write. I’m just more excited about this one.) And because I’ve been very cagey about what it is I’m writing, I’ll just say this: it probably would fall under the category of Sherlock Holmes fan fiction. It’s my own take on the whole Sherlock Holmes mythos.

I will try to keep up with this blog throughout the month, but it likely that the posts will be pretty short, like this one. Wish me luck! 50,000 words of a novel in one month is a huge feat, but I’m determined to do it this year!

Letting myself write a crappy draft

Let me explain my title. Far too often when I’m writing, my internal editor snaps on and begins telling me how awful the stuff I’m writing is, how I need to change it, and that it needs to be perfect. I suspect this is partially because I’ve been revising a novel for so many years and also writing for classes in school where there’s a grade attached to what I write.

However, it’s paralyzing me as I’m trying to write Lorrie’s novel. “This isn’t as good as The Warrior Angel,” my internal editor says. “Just dump this and move on.”

I don’t want to dump this story. I like it and I think it can be fantastic. But I find myself time and time again getting frustrated with it and stopping writing because it’s not what I want it to be.

Then recently, I read a wonderful book called Cobble Stones by Sandra Tayler. I’ve mentioned her on my blog before and I love her blog One Cobble at a Time. In Cobble Stones, which is a collection of blog posts from 2011, there is a chapter/post titled “Getting It Wrong”. Basically, Sandra writes about her son freezing on a test because of his fear of getting the wrong answer. She told him, “Get it wrong and move on.” This permission to get it wrong allowed her son to finish the test. He actually got most of the answers right because he knew them, he was just afraid of putting the wrong thing.

I love this idea. I actually heard Sandra mention it in a panel at LTUE and thought it was brilliant advice for pretty much anything in life. “Get it wrong and move on.” Then I promptly forgot about it/didn’t actually apply it when it came to my writing.

No more. I am bound and determined to have a complete draft of this novel by September. If I’m going to do that, I need to allow myself to write an absolutely crappy first draft. Chances are, this draft won’t be absolute crap. But if that’s what it takes to have a finished draft that I can then work with and revise, so be it.

It’s interesting to me that I forgot this. Several months ago I started using the program Write or Die. It’s an interesting little program in that it “punishes” you if you stop writing for a certain amount of time, thus encouraging you to just keep writing and not let your internal editor get in the way. It also times you and keeps track of your word count, so it’s like a race. I loved using this. I got a lot of writing done because this shut up my internal editor because I was determined to beat the clock.

Then I stopped using it. I was seriously revising The Warrior Angel and then was trying to put together the pieces of Lorrie’s novel that I had already written. Then when I began trying to write new stuff for Lorrie’s novel, I slammed into a mental wall and have really struggled with it. I think it’s time to break out Write or Die again. I think it’s time to remind myself that it’s okay if I write a crappy draft. A crappy draft is far better than no draft. A crappy draft can be fixed.

Done. I’m going to write in big letters on a post-it note “Get It Wrong!” and stick it on my desk above where my laptop sits where I can see it as I’m writing. I can do this. I’m going to shut my internal editor up for now, because this is not the place for that part of me. This is the place for that somewhat crazy dreamer that comes up with the stories to pour words on the page. It’s time to write a crappy draft.